Great Power
by cacticabbage
Summary: I dry her face with the sleeves of my shirt because they're much softer than the towel. She has her eyes closed. Post Spoils of War. How I imagine their journey home. Emphasis on Densi but all team members included.


Kensi is crying in my arms, she's really sobbing. The only thingly I can do is holding her tight. I stroke her hair and run my other arm up and down her back. I sway her slightly because I read somewhere it's supposed to be soothing.

There's a hole in my stomach. I feel so raw, like I'm bursting and my heart is ripping apart. But at the same time, it feels so good to hold her. She's the one sobbing and I'm trying to soothe her, but swaying her in my arms brings comfort to me. She's alive. That's all that matters right now. That's all I was hoping and praying for a few hours ago.

After a while her sobs are getting quieter. She leans her head against my shoulder and takes deep and unsteady breaths. When she pulls back, she stares at the ground. Her eyes are bleary and puffy and her face looks red and swollen. I take her hand and pull her into the tent next to us and sit her down on a plastic chair. She lets her head hang and looks at the ground. She looks even paler in the gloomy light inside.

I fill a glass with water from the container in the corner and give her to drink. She takes a tiny sip, but it's a sip non-the less. I wet a small towel and ask her if I can wash her face. She shrugs and mumbles, ok. I understand it, the trying to distance yourself, the not caring, the trance-like state. It's a protection mechanism. I was there, but seeing Kensi like this, hurts. It hurts to see brave, strong Kensi like this. I run the wet towel across her cheeks and chin as gently as I can.

Funny, a few hours ago I did a similar thing, except it was entirely different. I put a rag on a man's face and poured as much water onto it as I could. I didn't want to be gentle then, I didn't want to help and sooth, I wanted to hurt and I wanted him to suffer. I wanted to torture him. I think I felt satisfaction for a second. I did. Before I realized that I was the monster. Before I realized that I was hurting and old, blind, disabled man. Before I felt the profoundest disgust with myself.

I dry her face with the sleeves of my shirt because they're much softer than the towel.

Her head is hanging and she has her eyes closed. I wonder if she even notices what's happening. I push a stubborn curl of hair behind her ear and that's when she opens her eyes and looks at me. They are black in this dull lighting. She leans forward and touches her head against my forehead. She puts her hands on my shoulders. "Thank you for coming to get me home," she mumbles with a broken voice and my broken heart shatters into a hundred more pieces. We just stay like that, foreheads leaning against each other, breathing. When she pulls pack, she snags my hand to look at my watch and murmurs. "We should go to the mess, I don't want them to worry". We get up and walk with our shoulders touching.

The mess hall is loud and bustling. We sit at a table with Sam, Callen and Granger. Kensi's shoulders a slumped forward and she mechanically pokes around in her food. She doesn't even eat half of it. While Kensi stares at her plate, the guys try to make conversation. It's about how the desert sand gets into everything. But actually, they're all watching Kensi like hawks. Callen asks her something about how cleaning sand out of a magazine is a pain. She gives a monosyllabic answer while we all stare at her until she reaches for her hairband to pull it out.

She lets her hair tumble in front of her face, like a curtain separating her from us. She takes another tiny, completely un-Kensi-like bite. There's a pause in the conversation until Sam clears his throat and changes the topic from desert-sand to beach-sand. Suddenly I find myself bombarded with questions about how to keep a wetsuit sand-free. Even Granger takes interest and attempts an in-depth comparison of the graininess of different California beaches.

After eating, we go and sit down in an office room to wait for our plane. Callen seems intent on continuing the sad sand conversation so Kensi snags a magazine that's lying around and flips it open. Sam and Callen carry out an alibi back and forth about sand in bathing suits while they stare at Kensi staring intently at the same page for ten whole minutes.

Granger comes and says that Kensi still has to clear out the bunkroom she's lived in for the past five months. She looks up for a moment. "Deeks, can you do it?"

I'm surprised but I walk over to their compartment with Granger. We walk in silence because there is nothing to say.

The small room is surprisingly tidy for a place Kensi lived in. I pick up a bag and pile in the few clothes she had in the cupboard. Her cellphone lies next to her bed, it's out of battery. Underneath is a book. _The General in his Labyrinth_ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She's borrowed it from the on-base library. I open it and my shattered heart jumps out of my chest. She used the picture of me sitting on a camel as a bookmark.

I read _"__There is great power in the irresistible force of love" _and decide to bring it along as well. After everything that's happened, I might as well steal a book for her.

We sit next to each other on the plane. After she's blankly stared ahead for half an hour, she puts her hand in mine and looks away. Five minutes later, her head is on my shoulder and she's asleep. She's snort-snoring into my ear, not loud enough for the guys in front of us to hear, but loud enough to reverberate through my entire body.

And I sit there, thousands of feet above a huge ocean that kept us separated for so long, her hand in mine, her pulse against my palm, her breathing in my ear, and suddenly tears start trickling down my cheeks and after a while they noiselessly stream down my face. I let them dry until a salty crust burns on my skin.

When we arrive in L.A., Nell and Eric await us. They tentatively hug Kensi and then all of us. They have tears in their eyes. We don't say much. Kensi keeps her head down and stares at the grey floor until Nell offers to drive us home.

Kensi sits in the back and I decide to give her the little room I can and sit shotgun. Nell is sensitive enough to know that neither of us can use a conversation about something depressing like sand. She puts her hand on my shoulder at a red light. I look in the rearview mirror. Kensi is staring out the window. It's hard to believe that L.A. looks the same, that the world went on spinning while hers stopped.

At the intersection, Kensi's frail voice asks if we can go to my place. I love Nell because she doesn't ask, her facial expression doesn't even change, she just steers the car to the other lane.

She drops us off and waits with Kensi while I get Monty from Mrs. Kleiner, my neighbor. Before she leaves, Nell hugs me so hard that I want to cry in her short arms.

Monty puts his head on Kensi's lap and demands a good rub. She still has her hair curtain in front of her face but I think I see a smile. Maybe it's wishful thinking.

She's taking a shower but suddenly she calls for me and I'm in horror and run to the bathroom. She's wearing an old pair of sweatpants and holds a towel in front of her chest. Her back is bare and covered in bruises. I want to scream. Her pale skin gets a little rosy when she asks me to put some cream onto them. I try to be as careful as possible but she still winces in pain and I feel like I'm the monster torturing her.

Our eyes meet in the mirror. We look old, worn out, like we've been through hell. In all fairness, we have. She turns around, drops the towel and gingerly pulls my old Beatles-shirt over her head. Gingerly; brave, strong, beautiful Kensi doesn't do gingerly. I watch her bruised back in the mirror.

After, I get her to eat half a banana and drink half a glass of water with a light pain pill. When I've finished my shower she's lying in bed on her stomach, head buried into my pillow. I can hear how hard she tries to stifle her sobs. I pull her under the covers with me. We're in a dark and warm cocoon. It's outside of this world. No guns, no torture no terrorists. Eventually her sobs even out and we fall asleep.


End file.
